Phoenix begins production!

It is with immense joy that I finally announce the beginning of Phoenix‘s production stage!

In case you didn’t know what Phoenix is, it’s the upcoming 9th album of my progressive metal music outlet, The Santtu Pesonen Project. It contains 5 tracks, each with their distinct mood and style. The album will also feature what’s going to be the longest song I’ve recorded yet – it currently clocks in at 13 minutes, and I haven’t even finished writing it yet!

Anyway, on another note, it was just confirmed that Phoenix will be my first album to feature live drums since Roots back in 2015. In fact, I just made scratch drum tracks for 3 songs out of the 5 featured on the album. The tracking of the actual drum parts will take place as soon as this coming Sunday, so I hope to be able to finish writing the remaining 2 tracks and make the scratch tracks for them within this week.

Phoenix will also be my first album ever to feature guest musicians. I’ve been in talks with a fellow musician about some synth stuff for one of the tracks, and I also have plans for a guest guitar solo (which I actually posted about earlier) and a backing choir for two others. If those plans work out as intended, the bar for the next The Santtu Pesonen Project album – if/when a 10th one happens – will surely be set high.

I’m unable to say when Phoenix will be released as of yet, but with enough luck, you’ll hear the first tracks off of it sometime next month.